As Cyn told her Mother, she and Cec had plans for Christmas! Their Goodbye Cambridge Party was postponed until January, but I’m sure they had Carol to stay and fed Cec’s hungry friends on Christmas Day. And Cyn’s Christmas card list was colossal- 127 names listed! As it appeared Cec had done in the past, they sent a card with a photograph- his had been scenes of Cambridge, but this year, they sent their wedding photo. To Cyn’s list of relatives in Ireland, America, England, and the West Indies and her friends in England and America, was added all Cec’s friends and relations in Canada and England, their wedding guests, plus ‘professional’ names- professors, and Admiralty contacts. Some they were saying goodbye to, some they would be seeing in the new year.
Cyn’s teaching career was ending, with the usual Christmas task for the Cookery teacher, her student’s decorated Christmas cakes.
And, as with schools everywhere, there was the Christmas Concert, with musical numbers and what seems to be a Nativity Scene. I’m sure there was also a farewell tea for Cynthia, with good wishes from her colleagues.
And at home there was a happy domestic Christmas, with a tree, presents, Cyn’s lists, a good dinner with friends, and, of course, a cat.
Thank you so much for your letter which we received this morning. I meant to write yesterday, but what with unpacking & eating we didn’t seem to have a moment! Today has been busy too, but Cec is now doing the washing up for me while I write. Isn’t he nice?!
As you will see, we are returning Cliff’s snaps to you and are sending Cec’s for you to see. We went to see Edward this afternoon, and he is doing us some prints and enlarging some, so we will let you have some later. We also ordered our pictures & the ones for N/C & some for Cec’s people, but decided we would order what we wanted for relatives etc. later, & might even send some at Christmas as Ray suggested. We weren’t sure of what size the N/C ones were to be, so we ordered postcard size, Edward said that he had sent you yours yesterday, so you will have them to show Mary. He had a big picture of the group with you & Charlie in, & a little one of the kids throwing confetti, in his window. I have just been telling Cec that you & Charlie look like the little man & woman on the weather gauge- like little Noah’s Ark-y people, & he thinks it is rude, but I mean it nicely! Edward said that he had sent you a different picture of you & Joan where you look nice, & that he could cut off Joan, so let us know if you like it & we’ll have some done that way.
This was Cyn and Cec’s wedding present to themselves. It seems to have fallen, but was fixed.
It was quite all right about our picture, by the way. We noticed it after a while & looked all about, for it, but more or less guessed what happened, as Cec had his doubts about the plaster at the time. We will go into the shop this week & see about it – we would like to get it done again I think, & Cec is going to fix rawlplugs for it & the mirror in the bedroom. We did see Joan, but it was before we noticed it had gone, so we were quite puzzled for a while, but I thought maybe you had forgotten to tell us! I’m glad it came to you in a flash, though!
Receipt for the wedding present map.
Since we saw you on Friday, we seem to have done such a lot, but really we haven’t done much at all. We went & got the snaps on Sat. A.M. & went to the Shipping Co. & took Cec’s watch to be mended, then back to the Gr. Eastern for lunch & caught the 2:15 train. We were home by 4 o’clock & found Gwen & Jerome still here to our surprise, & the new people in too. We dumped our things- found bread & veg. from Joan & lovely, beautiful gladiolas from Mrs. Ewing – thank you very, very much, Mummy. I looked up as I got out of a taxi & saw them & knew you had asked someone to get them for us. We went shopping straight away & Claude greeted us with great joy & quite compared notes on married life with us! Also gave me all my back rations, so we got masses of nice frying steak! On our way back we called in & said thank you to Joan & Ray & have invited them to dinner on Friday as it isn’t long before they go now.
We had Gwen & Jerome up for a drink of Cherry Brandy that evening as they were leaving next day. Joan is going on to them for a week when she returns and in the meanwhile the man downstairs is looking after Tilly & we are looking after Spiv!
Spiv
Sunday we slept late – despite the bed which is rather hard & lumpy & very small! In Cannes we had 2 big divan beds pushed together to make one – here it is so small & the sides slope so that we roll into the middle. Sat night Cec won and got in the middle first, but last night I did! We didn’t seem to do anything except unpack & sort dirty clothes & cook & eat meals & take Tillie a walk, but we were busy all day! I forgot to say that Gwen has brought us the dearest kitchen cabinet. It is not very big, but so nice & neat & useful- I am delighted with it & don’t know how we would have managed without it. Also Jerome stained the other floors for us & they look very nice.
Today I sent off the cake & a note to Bebe. We decided not to send the other one to Canada, but if it is still OK by the time we go we will take it with us & deliver it ourselves. I think it should keep till Feb if Dottie says we should keep it for the christening! Cec did up the laundry & we had lunch & then went down to the Bank, Food Office, etc. & then on to Edward & Mr. Ward & home for tea. I also shopped this a.m. & washed my hair & so was busy again! Mr. Ward gave me all my back rations too, so we are wallowing! I talked to Mrs. Lock this p.m. & did the kitchen fire out & now I am going to have my bath & go to bed. The Locks are coming up for a drink tomorrow evening – they seem nice.
I forgot to say thank you too, Mummy, for my dear little stool – it is cute & so useful – thank you very much. By the way, let us know which day next week you will come- any will suit suit us, & stay overnight too if it is convenient. We will have a gossip!
Must stop now – love to AGL & thank her for her letter.
With lots & lots of love
from Cyn
[Cec’s handwriting] Dear Mum,
We are settling in and it is really beginning to feel like home – it’s a wonderful feeling. See you next week.
While the newlyweds had their honeymoon, life went on among their friends and relations. Carol, the mother of the bride, had sent her choice of wedding photos to the groom’s family in Canada the week after the wedding. The Costains in Saskatoon made sure the news was spread, with quite a lot of biographical detail!
The Anglican Church at Chesterton, England, was the scene of a pretty wedding July 26 when Cynthia Hazell Ewing, daughter of Mrs. J. M. Ewing of Cambridge, England, became the bride of Lt.-Cmdr. Cecil Clifford Costain of Sutherland, son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry H. Costain. A reception was held in the Dorothy Cafe at Cambridge, the young couple leaving later for a honeymoon in Paris and Cannes. They will reside at 37 Freville Avenue, Cambridge.
The groom is a distinguished graduate in physics from the University of Saskatchewan, winner of an Empire scholarship and is now attending the University of Cambridge, England. For three and a half years during the war he served in the British Navy with the rank of lieutenant-commander and was in command of the radar squad on The Indomitable, winning the Distinguished Service Cross.
The bride was born in the West Indies, of English parents, and spent most of her life in England, with a year in Toledo, Ohio, as an exchange teacher.
They will return to Canada early in 1950, afterwards going to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for further graduate studies.
Cyn’s close childhood friend Denis was preoccupied with his own wedding two weeks after hers, and none of those invited above were able to attend, Cec and Cyn being in France and Carol packing up for London. But wedding presents and photographs were exchanged.
Denis and Dorothy Sheedy
And a week after that, in Newcastle, Cyn’s other childhood friend, Nan, had her baby and sent an announcement.
Since we got down here we have been as lazy as can be & have done nothing except sleep, eat, drink & totter down to the beach to bathe! We have a ground-floor room in an annex of the hotel, which is quite comfortable, but it is warmer than the weather we’re used to!
It is gloriously sunny, but we burn so easily that we are trying to keep out of it as much as possible & sit under umbrellas on the beach etc. The sea is lovely & we bathe twice usually & Cec ducks me regularly & says that as we sweat so much, swallowing salt water is good for me! We bought me a snappy white satin bathing suit with a strapless top. After various adventures in the water with the top practically around my waist, I have decided that it must be for glamorous sunbathing only!
The journey from Paris to Avignon took 10 hours & was very hot & dirty, so we were very glad to stay there for 2 nights & recover. Then we travelled down here on Sunday, which took 5 hours & was nice as we arrived about 4 o’clock & felt fine. We don’t eat in the hotel, except breakfast, so have fun choosing a different place each day – Cec laughs because whatever I order turns out to be the hugest helping of anyone in the restaurant & I have a struggle to eat it – but usually manage!
We leave here on 16th & travel overnight & have decided to stay a day or so in Paris. We expect to be in London on the night of the 19th & will ring you, but know no times yet. I wonder if you would write Mrs. Thompson, Mummy & ask her to get milk & bread for us on Saturday 20th- we hope to get back in time for me to go shopping otherwise.
[In Cec’s handwriting:] The suit is actually transparent when wet, I’m surprised at her – but not much.
As Carol said, Cec and Cyn rushed off on their honeymoon, presumably because they didn’t want to miss their train, but didn’t get farther than London for a few days. They went to a Skating Show, perhaps the first of many they would see throughout the years!
Cyn says in her letter that crossing the Channel was fine and they enjoy Paris. They plan to go south, Avignon, Le Corniche D’Or, Cannes- some of the same places that Cec had been the summer before on his bicycling trip, but with a lot more luxury. But nowhere does Cyn give her mother an address, although Cec had carefully booked in advance.
Hotel Messina
Rue Trouchet
Paris
Monday.
Dearest Mummy,
We sent you a P. C. from the top of the Eiffel Tower today, but I am drying my hair while to Cec snoozes so I thought I’d tell you our doings. I hope that you haven’t had the horridest time getting everything fixed & that you are all packed up & ready to go to Miss Lefroy’s now. We can hardly believe that it is Bank Holiday today & that we haven’t been married a week yet. Tomorrow, for our anniversary, we are going to a night club!
We had a nice time in London, & a very pleasant crossing. The French train was hot, but as we crossed Newhaven– Dieppe it was a longer sea & shorter rail journey. Our Paris hotel is cute. We have a nice room & bathroom & the chambermaid looks on us as being a great joke & speaks very simple French at us! The weather has been wonderful, but rather too hot at times for sightseeing. We seem to have walked miles, but we are getting a bit better on the Metro, so have saved our feet a bit today.
The hotel is just by the Madeleine, so we have seen that & have walked down the Rue de la Paix & the Champs Élysées. We went & saw Notre Dame & the Louvre & the Jardin des Tuileries & the Arc de Triomphe & today went up the Tower & then to Les Invalides. Our first morning we window shopped & went through the Galleries Lafayette & gazed at all the lovely things. My husband bought me a darling little evening bag & I was pleased!
We are having a wonderful time eating & drinking! We have breakfast brought to our room in the hotel- tea & rolls. Then we have a huge lunch about 12, then we either have tea or lemonade in a café, or we buy gorgeous cakes & eat them in our room & finally have a huge dinner with wine in the evening. It’s wonderful! We have weighed ourselves & are going to do it again on the way home!
I will stop now as I want to try & get some more of my thank-yous written – still trying!
Cec and I think married life is nice– we like it!
With lots & lots of love
from
Cyn
&
Cec
P.S. Love to Miss Lefroy & Miss Hall.
P.P.S. You have a wonderful daughter, Mum.
Cec.
Paris.Cyn’s menus!
Halfway through Carol’s unsent letter, she started responding to this letter from Cyn, which was posted the day after the British Bank Holiday, on Tuesday August 2, 1949. There were machines at railway stations, and perhaps on the Metro, where you could put in a coin, stand on the machine, and get a printout of your weight. Cyn and Cec did this, at the beginning and end of their honeymoon, and Cyn carefully saved the evidence and pasted it into her scrapbook. Both of them definitely gained weight!
River Cruise.
I remember meeting my father in Paris at Eastertime when I was 22: he had a conference there, and I was spending a year at a university in England. I agreed with my mother, the hotel was cute- open elevators with doors you had to shut, such as I had seen in movies- I did some sight seeing and went to the Paris Opera, but what I most clearly remember and enjoyed, was the food! I ate Sole Meuniere in every restaurant, and his French colleagues were happy I appreciated it, even though I preferred tea to coffee. I did not, however, get to any night clubs with bare-breasted ladies or can-can dancers- Cec had done that with better company…
The bride: Miss Cynthia Ewing.The Wedding Ceremony.Mr and Mrs Costain.The Bill!The Wedding Party: Ruth Stainthorpe, Cec, Cyn, Zinnia, Dick Chapman.
Dick, Ruth, Zinnia, Cec, Cyn, Dr. Charlie Stainthorpe, and the mother of the bride, Carol Ewing.Telegrams from Well-Wishers who couldn’t come- 30 of them to read at the reception!
When I began this blog posting the letters of a daughter to a mother, I suggested that nothing very harrowing or emotional would be revealed in them, because no daughter wants to upset her mother living far away in time and distance, unable to console, comfort or rejoice in the moment. An event may be described, it is certainly personal, but it is in the past, and has been survived, and the telling of it is reassuring in to both writer and reader. When I got t0 Cec’s war letters home, I realized this was true of sons as well, especially of events the Admiralty frowned upon sharing. I discovered, however, that other letters crept in, and occasionally were of the moment and emotional. Carol’s letter to her husband as she was on the point of leaving him, was harrowing. And love letters are intensely personal and emotional. They are intended to be read by only one person and I feel a little guilty about sharing them with the world, but they are part of the story. These two notes, treasured by her, were found in one of the slots of Cyn’s writing case.
Cyn and Cec got engaged at the beginning of March 1949, and planned and booked their wedding for July 26th, 1949, at 2:30. The March letter suggests the wedding invitations had already been sent out, and Cec’s friends in England were responding to them.
11 Park St.
Cambridge.
March 23, 1949
My Darling,
Here I am back home, with no chance to see you. I got a telegram yesterday to tell me to come back for a dinner in honour of Dr. Sutherland on his F.R.S. So I came back, went to the dinner at K.P at 7:30 & then onto Sutherlands till 12:30. It was great fun at times, but my cold had just reached its climax (I hope) & I didn’t feel much like celebrating. I was hoping I would be able to slip away early & come & see you, sweetheart, but I didn’t get the opportunity.
I hope you didn’t have the same germs as I did, Cyn, the little —— were at work inside my nose with pickaxes. Also, I missed the licensing hours & couldn’t get any medicine. However, I am on the mend now & should be OK by Friday.
I’ll miss most of today – Wed. in Baldock, but it’s not much loss since they are having a big official “visitors day” & will be overrun by boffins.
I had a letter from Cliff asking us to stay with them for a day or so. He says “It will mean of course, your sleeping on the floor (unless it is two single beds in the back bedroom!) but I know you won’t mind this, will you?” I’m not sure which it is he thinks I won’t mind!!
I miss you, Cyn darling. It’s awful spending a week away from you. But it’s only 17 weeks yesterday! Then I won’t have to leave you again.
I also heard from Al Bryce. He said when he saw the writing on the envelope he said to himself “There goes Cec!”. He said I seemed to have that “subdued self satisfied look” about me a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t think my self-satisfied look was quite so obvious, darling. Al is sailing on July 26, darling mine, so I think it would be nice for us to get over for a visit at Easter.
Must catch my train to Baldock, lover, so I’ll say goodbye till Friday.
I love you,
Cec.
This crumpled note with mystery columns of addition on it was obviously written by Cec on the morning of his wedding day, and refers to the tradition that the groom mustn’t see the bride until they meet at the altar.
My Darling,
I’m not allowed to see you until 2:30 today, but I don’t think there is any custom which stops me from writing you a letter to tell you how much I love you.
The months and weeks before a wedding are filled with preparations. Cyn, Cec, and Carol sent invitations to friends and family in England, Canada, the States, and the West Indies, knowing that only local friends and family would be able to come.
Three pages, finishing with handwritten additions, from presents they received once they got to America.Cards that accompanied the wedding presents.
As responses came in, Cyn kept organized lists of the wedding presents that accompanied them and Cec booked travel tickets and hotels for an August honeymoon in France. Outfits were planned: the groom and best man would wear their naval uniform; the bride, bridesmaid, and flower girl would wear white. Auntie Moo had sent the silver Hazell bouquet holder that other family brides had used, and the florist was entrusted with it.
Silver bouquet holder: pin through leaves to hold the posy in even if upside down- you put your finger through the ring and let it dangle when dancing!
The week before a wedding is filled with crises! Ours involved a frantic outfitting of my three small future stepsons with navy blazers and grey trousers on Boxing Day, the day before the ceremony. Cynthia’s involved The Wedding Cake. After years of organizing Christmas cakes in her Cookery classes, supervising the making and decorating of ‘hundreds’ of them, Cyn wanted to decorate her own wedding cake.
Cyn’s sketches of design ideas for the wedding cake.
With rationing still in existence in England, the difficulty of obtaining suitable ingredients for the traditional fruit cake was overcome by asking her Auntie Muriel in St Vincent, who had sent them a Christmas cake in December, to send the cake made already, for her to decorate. It arrived from St Vincent, soldered into tin containers, and Cec was called upon to open the tins. The three tiers emerged, solid with fruit and preserved with lots of good West Indian rum! A fruit cake is traditionally topped with a layer of marzipan paste and then iced with white royal icing that hardens, then is decorated. Cyn covered the three tiers with the marzipan and smooth icing and allowed it to harden overnight before starting on the decorations. But in the morning she discovered that the rum-soaked cake was bleeding through and discolouring the white surface. A thicker layer, preferably done at the last minute, was required. This worked, and the intricate lattice work, flowers, and appliqués of lucky silver horseshoes was completed. Assembly had to follow, before the final piping of rosettes around the pillars for a finished look. But when the pillars were set upon the cake, and the heavy next layer balanced on them, they began to sink! Cyn and Cec hastened to disassemble before irreparable damage was done, and Cec was forced to sacrifice candles the size of the pillars, carefully core out the cake, and insert the candles as firm supports for each of the upper tiers. Then Cyn could finish her piping and on the morning of the wedding day, add the silver vase on the top, filled with fresh flowers. Cec, who had sampled the cores he’d removed from the cake, suggested the guests would get tiddily from merely consuming a slice…
In the world of 2020, Cambridge’s May Balls were cancelled this June because of the Covid 19 pandemic. But in 1949, Cyn and Cec went to the May Ball at St. John’s College, and although I can’t help wondering how much dancing Cyn got to do because I never knew Cec to dance, I am sure they had a wonderful night: a party of 10, white tie, ball gowns, dance cards, a menu that assumed it was an all-night affair (and which of course Cyn saved), and an atmosphere of general rejoicing at the end of the academic year.
Party of 10: Cec took the picture, and as the dance card shows, they could dance from 9:30 p.m. until the ‘Last Waltz into Gallop’ at 5:33 a.m. There were 5 different Supper times to choose from (11:30-3:30) and a Buffet to sustain them until then.
Not to mention a ‘Consommé au Départ’ to warm them up before going home! And of course Cyn and Cec had a more personal celebration coming up the month following…
Cyn and Cec had met each other’s friends in Cambridge in the year since they had met, but the Easter holidays gave them a chance to branch out, meet friends outside of Cambridge, and enjoy the theatre, one of Cyn’s favourite things. The picture in the scrapbook for Easter 1949 above features baby Nigel, 4 months. In London, they would have spent time with Jessie and Norman Aldridge and their little girls, where Cyn had an important question to ask- would Jessie’s 6-year-old daughter Zinnia be her flower girl in July? With clothes coupons still needed, this was quite a demand but Jessie and Zinnia agreed!
Easter at Oxford.
For the actual Easter weekend, they collected Carol from Cambridge and went to Oxford, to visit Cec’s friends at the other university. I imagine Cyn is on the bank taking pictures of her mother enjoying the experience of punting in Oxford-something she probably never had time for in Cambridge!
On the anniversary of the house-warming party where they had first met, April 26th, Cec gave Cyn a memento, and she pasted the card into their scrapbook.
A Family History in Letters 